anity. It
was not a religion, for it had neither any historical root nor any
belief and practice definite enough for the guidance of the common
people. Yet Christianity could not have conquered the world without
it.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED

E. Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, vol. ii., contains the first
attempt to deal with Greek religion in the manner now required.

The Histories of Greece of Grote, Curtius, Abbott, and Holm.

Roscher, _Lexikon der griechischen, a Romischen Mythologie_.

Dyer, _The Gods of Greece_.

Gardner and Jevons, _Manual of Greek Antiquities_, 1895.

L. R. Farnell, _The Cults of the Greek States_, 1896-1907.

Naegelsbach, _die Homerische Theologie_.

Williamowitz, _Homerische Untersuchungen_.

G. Anrich, _das Antike Mysterienwesen_.

Rohde, _Psyche_, 1891.

L. Campbell's Gifford Lectures on _Religion in Greek Literature_,
1898.

E. Caird, _The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers_,
1904.

Holwerda, in De la Saussaye, Third Edition.

Ramsay on "Religion of Greece and Asia Minor" in Hastings' _Bible
Dictionary_.

S. Reinach, in _Oxford Proceedings_, vol. ii. p. 117, _sqq._

CHAPTER XVII
THE RELIGION OF ROME

The Romans themselves at a certain period in their history identified
their own gods with those of Greece, and borrowed largely both from
Greek ritual and Greek mythology, so that they came to the conclusion
that the Roman and the Greek religions were essentially the same. To
the early Christian writers the religions of Greece and Rome form one
system; and the world has retained the impression that there was one
old pagan religion which assumed certain local differences in the two
countries, but was substantially the same in both.

Roman Religion was different from Greek.--Now the fact is that while
Greek religion conquered Rome, Italy had an older religion of its
own, which was not annihilated by the more brilliant newcomer, but
remained beside it and never entered into entire fusion with it. The
Romans were not a thinking so much as an organising race; in politics
they were far ahead of the rest of the world, but in thought and
imagination they were children; and so it happened that they borrowed
ideas and usages from neighbours on this side and on that, and
organised the whole into a system they could use, the organism being
their own, but only little of the contents.

We must therefore inquire, in the first place, as to the religion the
Roman